


Inside Site Number 24

by lwise2019



Series: Mikkel's Story [6]
Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-07
Updated: 2019-11-07
Packaged: 2021-01-24 15:23:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21340423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lwise2019/pseuds/lwise2019
Summary: Emil describes what happened inside site number 24.
Series: Mikkel's Story [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1536739
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Inside Site Number 24

Mikkel only allowed Emil to shampoo his hair once. As shaken as the younger man was, Mikkel suspected that he would continue to shampoo it all afternoon if permitted to do so. As it was, Emil had rinsed it four times by Mikkel's count while the two of them (mostly Mikkel) scrubbed all the befouled clothing as they knelt by the stream.

“What exactly happened in there, Emil?”

“Uh ... where's Sigrun? I expect she could answer better —”

“She's looking around for herbs we can use. We're not well provided for in terms of medical supplies, you know, and maybe she can find us an antiemetic herb.”

“What's a … anti-emmy … what?”

“An antiemetic keeps you from vomiting.”

“Oh – I'm sorry about that. It was, just —”

“Not for you. For Lalli.”

“Oh, right. Yeah, he's had a tough time.”

“Just so. Now, what exactly happened in there?”

> Well, at first I found some books but they were all rotted and I thought we'd come all this way and got stuck in the Silent World for _nothing_, but Sigrun wasn't worried at all, Mikkel, she never turned a hair at anything that whole time, even when –
> 
> Well, I'll get to that. We couldn't talk to Lalli and he couldn't talk to us so we just had to _look_ at him and try to figure out if he was worried about anything. He's a good guy and all and I'm sure he's a great scout, but … Anyway, there were _bodies_ in there, well, bones at least, like they'd brought all these sick people in and they just _died_ there and they were just lying there all those years until we came in …
> 
> Yeah, but it was okay, nothing to freak out about. Not them. They were just dead guys and all. Sigrun said she saw stuff like that all the time, and Hunters get used to it. It didn't bother me at all. They were just dead guys.
> 
> But then we found the library! And it was all closed up and nothing had leaked in or grown in there at all! It was so great and I was so happy. Except for the dead guy though. He was just lying in the middle of the floor like … like ... so that's where we got all those books we brought you.
> 
> And we were going to go back and bring you in to help carry the books, but … but then Lalli started freaking out at stuff dripping out of a vent, and we knew there shouldn't be anything dripping, and Sigrun said we had a “visitor”, and I knew she meant a grossling. We thought it was just a little one, to fit in that vent, you know, and we didn't want to just go off and leave all those books – there were enough to fill the tank!
> 
> So Sigrun said we'd split up, just to check for the thing and meet back in a few minutes. I was supposed to stay with Lalli, or he was supposed to stay with me I mean, but I looked away and he was just _gone!_ I don't know where he ran off to or why, maybe Tuuri can find out, but he was _gone!_ It wasn't my fault at all!
> 
> I went looking for the grossling like I was supposed to and I heard it and I was going to kill it, only … oh, Mikkel, there was a thing _on the ceiling_ and it _drooled_ on me …
> 
> Yeah, I ran and the other grossling ambushed me and I cut off some pieces but it was on top of me … Sigrun just ran up and killed it! Then we ran but they were chasing us and she said there were a gazillion of them so I threw a bottle of oil and some incendiaries behind us and …
> 
> And the building blew up.

“You threw a bottle of oil and four incendiaries at some grosslings and the building blew up.” Mikkel prompted.

“Four? I thought it was more but … there must have been some gasses built up down there or the grosslings were sort of explosive … that happens sometimes,” Emil muttered.

Mikkel dropped the subject. He was, however, quite certain that any gasses in the building would have dissipated decades earlier, and no grossling he'd seen had ever exploded, though he'd seen a _lot_ of grosslings during his service in the army. Emil was a Cleanser who could “do more with less”, indeed.


End file.
